I never met her in person, but I feel as if I knew her. Jessica Ghawi, known professionally as Jessica Redfield, was a Denver-based hockey blogger and aspiring sportscaster. She died in the Colorado theatre shooting, in which 12 people were killed and 59 people were injured. She was only 24 years of age.

In the wake of the "Dark Knight" shooting, there is the inevitable and understandable desire to seek an explanation -- to make sense of the senseless. Somehow this monstrosity might have been averted -- if gun laws were different, if someone who knew the killer could have stopped the crime in advance, if social welfare programs to treat such sociopaths were improved, if movies didn't encourage such violence. And those thoughts may feel even more urgent to Canadians as our week began and ended with horrific shootings -- on Monday, two people were killed and 24 injured at a Toronto block party.